VANCOUVER – After hundreds of sightings and reports from Burnaby to Port Coquitlam, Lucy the elusive border collie cross, has been caught.

She has been “on the lam” for 299 days, after escaping in August 2013, just one week after arriving at her foster home.

She was rescued from a hoarding situation by Last Chance Animal Rescue but managed to slip her leash and run away from her foster family. PetsearchersCanada started the long search looking for her and documented her journey on their website.

Lucy is so fast, smart and alert that no one has been able to get near her, nor cajole her close enough to get caught. As we’ve worked on getting her safe over the last months, we have come to understand the severity of her distrust for humans. Not only did she come from a hoarding situation, where she was fending for herself amongst 150+ dogs, being fed every few days and only able to get food if she was fast enough to get there first; since escaping, Lucy has had to deal with people chasing her, throwing things at her and letting their large more powerful dogs off leash to chase her. It was heartbreaking to see, as she was so distrustful of humans that even the huge number of kind, gentle people who wanted to help her couldn’t convince her that she could be safe in the care of a kind human.

Lucy was sighted in Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Burnaby and in late February Coquitlam Animal Control told Petsearchers they had received multiple sightings of her in the same area of Coquitlam. Al MacLellan from Petsearchers spent weeks tailing Lucy and worked to acclimate her to a trap near feeding stations set up for her.

However, Lucy would not enter a secure area and would check carefully before entering any fenced area to ensure there was a way out.

They first tried to capture her in March, and even though they were successful in blocking her in to the fenced area, she became so frantic she managed to break through and disappeared.

She would return to the same area but would never put her head inside the doorway to get the food waiting for her.